At seventeen I started my degree course at Edinburgh University in the sixties. The course was French and Linguistics, and included English Literature, Social Anthropology, Moral Philosophy, Phonetics and several other 'side-studies'.

I sat in the lecture hall ready for my first Eng Lit lecture, which turned out to be all about Robert blooming Burns! I was a real Londoner with a rather dodgy Cockney accent, and hadn't the least clue what the lecturer was saying. I had the textbook, but every word was riddled with apostrophes.
I had to grab a Scots girl in my Hall of Residence and get her to translate for me each evening.
It was like learning a foreign language.
And Robert Burns wasn't even English was he?